Our community is filled with hard-working, high achieving entrepreneurs and creatives and so work-life balance is a complicated, but highly relevant topic. We’ve shared some responses from the community about work life balance and how their views have evolved over time below.

Tambreshia Richardson | Credit & Tax Specialist

I’ve come a long way with balancing my business. In the beginning, it was my newborn baby. I spent many hours every day into building my systems, working with clients, marketing and many more tasks while balancing a full time job. Days turned into weeks then months and I was still in the grind. I began to feel the burnout very quickly. I noticed that I was no longer putting time into other important things around me. Over time, I have had to designate time for my business and stand firm on my time. I make sure that I have time for my personal self-care, my family, friends and my business. It is easy to get wrapped up in business especially when it’s something that you enjoy. I felt bad not taking calls late at night or on the weekends. However, I had to learn that having balance is what allows me to also have a healthy relationship with other things that are important to me. Read more>>

Emily Holt | Graphic Designer & Illustrator

Work/life balance was a major reason why I started my own one-woman graphic design studio. I tend to approach aspects of my life with a very “ebb and flow” mentality. I can throw myself into my design work and keep my head down for weeks or months at a time, but to avoid burnout, I have hit pause and recharge – whether that be with travel or a new personal project. This is all so much easier to do when you’re in charge of scheduling your own projects, but it’s also a little trickier to define those hard lines between work and personal. The first few years of my business were intense – with planned breaks here and there for that creative recharge. At times, I probably took on more work than I should have, but I was so focused on building up a sustainable business. Read more>>

Amy Connolly | Royalty Dance Academy Studio Owner

I’ve had my dance studio for 15 years, and it has taken 15 years for me to find a good work life balance, and even then I’m still perfecting it daily. When I first opened my studio I was a slave to it, as any new up and coming small business owner is, and all I did was eat, sleep and breath my dance studio 24/7 around the clock! I would say it took the first five years to get it going, establish it’s name and reputation in the community and off it’s feet for me to realize that it was okay and “allowed” for me to step back a little and okay for other people to help me! I knew I had to make a change or I would be burned out before I ever hit our ten year mark, and that was the last thing I wanted to happen, especially after how hard I had worked building my studio from the ground up and how much love had been put into it! Read more>>

Rebekah Claborn | Wedding and Portrait Photography

I’ll get back to this question when I have balance figured out. There was a podcast and the interviewee said they didn’t like the concept of work/life balance because it never is balanced and I think that’s true. It’s never balanced but constantly changing. We don’t have the typical family routine of most. My husband is an environmental scientist and spends a lot of the year traveling; as I write this, he’s headed away for a week and was away for a week last week. Leaving me at home with two small kiddos, one which I also homeschool, trying to keep the house manageable, get some sleep, maybe read a novel, and, yeah, run a business. Every week for us is changing, so we have to change constantly what the day will look like (it does however, always have a hot cup of coffee), what do we want to accomplish, etc. Read more>>

Teresa Taponpanh | Hairstylist

Once upon a time I used to have a very unbalanced lifestyle when it came to work and life. It was 80% work and 10% life. I lived to grind. I had no choice. I realized that I was missing out on so much and needed to change it ASAP. It’s not worth it to spend your whole life working when you can make it work around your schedule. Read more>>